Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1906-1945 Theologian, Pastor, Martyr

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
was a theologian, pastor and martyr who lived
in relative obscurity
for most
of his brief life but who, sixty years after
his
death, exercises the
religious imagination like few others.

The eighth child of Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, a psychiatrist at the
University of Berlin, Dietrich was a child of privilege, academically
gifted
and, like his older brothers, driven to succeed. At age
twelve, he announced his intention to study theology, not so
much out
of personal devotion, but to claim a sphere of
activity that
had been
ignored by
other family
members. Dietrich studied
theology at
the
universities of Tübingen
and Berlin,
eventually
earning a
doctorate at
age 21 and
positioning himself for
a stellar
academic career.

But unlike many professional theologians, Bonhoeffer pursued a pastoral
vocation as
well: He took a vicarage in Barcelona
(1928), studied at Union
Theological Seminary in New
York
(1930-31), served as a pastor
in
London
(1933-35),
and trained seminarians in Germany
(1935-1939). Bonhoeffer was
unusual,
in fact, in the way he
was able to integrate
Christian ministry with
the academic
discipline of theology.Doing so
was not
easy; the
breakthrough
came in his
mid-20s when, he says,
“something
happened,”

something that has changed and transformed my life to the present
day….I
had
often preached, I had seen a great deal of
the
church, and
talked
and preached
about it—but
I had not yet become
a
Christian…I know that
at that
time I turned
the
doctrine of
Jesus Christ into
something
of
personal advantage
for myself…I
pray to
God that that will never happen
again.
Also I had
never prayed, or
prayed only very little. For all
my
loneliness, I was quite pleased with myself.
Then
the Bible,
and in
particular the Sermon
on the Mount,
freed me
from that.
Since then
everything has
changed. I have felt this
plainly,
and so have other
people about me. It was a
great liberation.
It became clear to me that
the life
of a servant of
Jesus
Christ must
belong to the Church, and
step by step it
became
plainer to me how far that
must go….My calling
is quite clear to me.
What
God
will
make of
it I do not know…I must
follow the
path.

Apart from the image of a theologian who prays and reads the Bible, what is
most compelling about Bonhoeffer is the way he opposed the Nazi
regime—unflinchingly, sacrificially and from the very first week of
Hitler’s
rule. Bonhoeffer almost immediately
recognized the
demonic
element in Nazism
that most
saw clearly only in
retrospect.At
a time
when the
majority of German
Christians
wished to adjust the
church’s
belief and practice to conform
with the
Nazi
revolution or
focus
exclusively on the
ecclesiastical
realm, Bonhoeffer
modeled a path of
theologically-inspired
resistance
that had
clear
political
implications.

In April 1933, for instance, just three months after Hitler was named
Chancellor of Germany, Bonhoeffer wrote that under certain
circumstances the
church might be obligated to “jam a
spoke in
the
wheel” of the German state.
This sort of
thinking set
Bonhoeffer apart
from most of his co-religionists
in
Lutheran
Germany and put him on a
path of
resistance that
would require his very
life.

Bonhoeffer was a leader in the Confessing Church movement that sought to
withstand National Socialism’s encroachments, but he found it difficult
to
convince even fellow
“confessors” of the
need to
defend the
regime’s
racial
victims.
By the
mid-1930s,
Bonhoeffer
despaired of the
possibility that the
institutional church
could offer
effective
opposition
to Nazism.By the late
1930s
he was convinced that,
for him
at
least, resistance must take the form
of
political
conspiracy.

Through members of his extended family, Bonhoeffer was enlisted as a double
agent with a resistance cell in the Abwehr (German
counter-intelligence).
Bonhoeffer served the
conspiracy
primarily by
utilizing ecumenical
contacts
in
Allied and
neutral countries on behalf
of the
resistance. He also participated
in a scheme
to spirit a group
of German Jews to Switzerland
and
was intimately
involved in the July
20th 1944
assassination
plot
against Hitler.

In April 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested under suspicion that his work for the
Abwehr was an attempt to avoid military service (which it was). While
in
detention, Bonhoeffer’s role in the conspiracy on Hitler’s
life was
discovered
and he was executed on Hitler’s
orders at
Flossenbürg, April
9th, 1945, just two
weeks before the Allies
liberated the camp.

Although Bonhoeffer had little time to devote to publishing after 1933, his
role as spiritual guide is tied to books like The Cost of
Discipleship (1937),
Life Together
(1938), and
Letters and Papers from Prison (published
posthumously
by his
friend and biographer
Eberhard
Bethge).
Like Bonhoeffer
himself, these
books can be
interpreted in different ways.
To
many, Bonhoeffer’s is a
christocentric message
that
discipleship
requires total
commitment and
that when
Christ calls someone,
“he
bids him
come and die.”

To others, Bonhoeffer’s experiences in the resistance and in prison allowed
him to glimpse a “non-religious” Christianity that would appeal to a
post-war
world “come of age.” To others, Bonhoeffer is more
spiritual
than religious, a
moral mentor for persons
of all
faiths or none.

What is beyond dispute is that Bonhoeffer’s reputation and influence continue
to grow among theologians, lay
Christians,
and
religious
seekers. Among
the
reasons for
his
popularity is the integrity
represented by his life
and
death—an
integrity between word
and
deed, thought and action
that
was as rare in his time
as
it is in
ours.